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“Aw, I wasn’t gonna say nothin’! Just wonderin’ what we’re doin’ with them…” Another punch to the gut.
“I said shut it! Next time’s your ass in a sling!”
“Come on!” Dante whispered. He led her behind pallets stacked with equipment and merchandise, covered with tarps and secured with ropes. Burly male workers dodged this way and that, lifting, tossing, and cursing.
Not much changed in the shipping business. Manpower was cheaper than robots or heavy machinery, especially without the benefit of labor unions and anti-slavery laws.
“You were right!” Dante said with an incredulous exhalation. “Those idiots left the doors wide open!”
Tinsley snorted and poked him in the ribs. “Well, let’s not waste an opportunity!” The two of them grabbed a couple of mops and brooms before walking up the gangplank and through the door as if they belonged there—the first and only rule of sneakery.
Hurrying down the hallway so they would appear on camera as though they had an important mess that needed cleaning, they glanced side to side for signs that pointed toward the hold. Finding one, they followed the stairwells down to the lower decks and entered.
Dante shut the door behind them and flipped on the light, illuminating floor-to-ceiling stacks of unmarked crates. “Holy…”
“What are they?” Tinsley asked. Pulling the shipping log toward her from its place hanging on the wall, she read out loud, “Calcium sulfate hemihydrate, Xogoli, 8.7 tons.”
“Well, I doubt they’re that,” Dante said, snapping up a spare crowbar and lifting the lid of one of the crates. Sure enough, it was crammed with vacuum-sealed bags of white powder. “Yep. Tinsley, meet Motley. Motley, Tinsley.”
Chapter 18
“Lovely to meet you. The pleasure is all mine.”
“Don’t talk to the Motley. It doesn’t deserve your niceties,” Dante chided mockingly.
Tinsley giggled and then sighed.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the room full of crates. “I guess I was hoping we would find Maraliza. Or at least… you know… something that might help locate her.”
Dante nodded and pulled Tinsley into a hug. “I know. But this is confirmation that they’re in an illegal trade, and we heard them talking earlier about transporting girls. That means there has to be evidence of some sort of trafficking scheme here somewhere. Read further back in the log.”
Tinsley flipped back a few pages and shook her head. “It’s all in code. Most of it just says calcium sulfate hemihydrate over and over. What is that stuff, anyway?”
Dante shrugged his huge shoulders. “The Jorvlens use that term a lot. We looked it up once back at PAPS, and it’s an ingredient in chalk or something. Point is, that’s the code for Motley. It’s a white powder and it would go through minimal checks because it’s an inert substance.”
Tinsley looked at him, confused. “So?”
“It means they’re looking for something similar to compare their illegal cargo to so no one cares about it or will look into it too much.”
Tinsley nodded. “Right. Because who cares about chalk?”
“Exactly. So think about shipments of girls.” Tinsley made a face. “I know. But they’re not here, and we have to find something or the whole trip was a waste.”
“Okay, okay. So they would need food and water…”
“And temperature-controlled storage, so look for a trip that includes several stops for coolant and water.”
“All right, that takes care of this, those, and these… Here! What’s a hoicka bear?”
“A what?” Tinsley pointed out the entry to Dante. “Hoicka Bears—Opwidius—9.8 tons.”
“Oh, boy.” Dante breathed.
“What?”
“It makes sense that they would use an animal for the code because it would need food, water, and temperature regulation, but 9.8 tons? That’s… that’s a lot.” Dante pulled a pen out of his pocket and wrote some ballpark figures on the sheet. “That would be over two hundred people.”
